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Saturday, August 29, 2009

WWF Maximum cards from Paraguay: giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla)



These are two official maximum cards (MCs) produced by the World Wildlife Fund, on behalf on Paraguay Post. Very interesting animal. I shouldn't have to provide direct links to wikipedia, etc. each time. You should read further on your own, if you are really interested.
Am I right? :)
Do you notice the young one, riding on mother's back - both on the postcard and on the affixed stamp? Hold on for dear life, baby...or else.

Look at these maximaphily pieces. Are they perfect? No.
Why?
Because of the placement of the stamp, and the postmark.
They could have been better placed on the upper left corner, without obscuring at all the animal's image. Do you agree?
What else?
The subject of the pictorial postmark. Yes, it's the WWF logo, the lovely giant panda. Most postmarks applied from WWF HQ in Switzerland have it. Only some local issues of such MCs have non-panda postmarks, such as the tigers from Russia - with tiger postmarks. See the tiger cub in the grass MC here:

The Paraguay MCs postmark is good, clean and clear. It could have been even better - perfect - if it featured a giant anteater, instead, for maximum concordance.
Overall, I like it, and I'd love to get or create more maximum cards/ maxicards/ maxi cards/ dorincards with the exotic (for me) wild mammals of Paraguay. :)

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Maximum cards: cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus)






Let's compare several maximaphily creations - maximum cards with cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus).

Virtual maximum card/maxicard/maxi card/dorincard (I only superimposed the paper fragment onto the postcard, without glueing it yet) from South Africa. I like this because it shows the essence of cheetah - the fastest mammal.

Usain Bolt, from the sunny Jamaica, is already a legendary champion athlete, but he would be left in the dust - way, way behind...:)
By running 100m in 9.58s, Usain reached an average speed of 37.58kph.
By running 200m in 19.19s, Usain reached an average speed of 37.52kph.
The fastest cheetah on record was clocked in Kenya for 103kph over 201m.
On average, that cheetah officially ran 100m in 3.495 seconds. Ye, man!

The South Africa stamp shows a cheetah, kinda running, but only half-hearted, half-assed. Or maybe it's at the beginning or at the end of a run. The postmark, from Nasionale Krugerwildtuin (Kruger National Park), shows it at full speed!

Maximum card/maxicard/maxi card/dorincard from the ex-bantustan of Venda. I love that the postcard is matte, not glossy, so the matching pictorial postmark is perfectly visible, even embossed a little.

Maximum card/maxicard/maxi card/dorincard from the ex-bantustan of Bophutatswana (not Botswana! :) ). Again, matte postcard, clean postmark - very nice maximum card! The stamp also shows a lil' bit of the cheetah's natural habitat in Africa. The safari motorists are becoming part of the landscape...